Finished Tray! How I Made It…

I thought it might be fun to make a blog on how I made my very first Printer’s Tray 🙂

I had to banish stressy thoughts about making it perfect, because I knew that would never help me begin! So first I arranged the little boxes where I wanted them and glued them into the tray. Then I covered the sides of tray with patterned paper. With a colour theme in mind I got a mixture of white, red, blue and purple arcylic paint and squished a few big blobs in different corners.

It looks a bit of a mess!

While I was a bit worried about how unblended the paint was, once I started to cover the backgrounds in different papers, the whole colour theme started to emerge. I used tissue tape round the box edges to bring everything together, although this doesn’t stay down that well. I used some pva glue to make it smoother and stick down, especially in the corners where it can get a bit fiddly.

Some of the papers I inked round the sides to give the boxes more depth.

I tried to balance the different colours and patterns of paper I used. I like to mix things up and not have them too symetrical. I was also going for a bit more a muted colour theme to tone down the painted background.

Then comes the fun part: embellishments! I just love adding embellishments to things! I had so many different things for this tray, but wanted to keep to a earthy nature theme as it is for my boyfriend’s parents. Otherwise it would probably be much brighter!

I just started to add pieces and knew I wanted some small prima flowers in one of the biggest boxes. I place a few key things like the light bulbs and metal flower, then just naturally built the whole thing round these. I used metal leaves in gold and bronze, buttons, wooden pieces, a few small bottles I filled with beads, a keyhole, an ornate plate, ribbon, small gift tags, hat pins, lots of glitter and gems 🙂